A neuron-transfer scientist develops a deep connection to a comatose woman after interfacing with her mindscape.

Synopsis:

Neuron-transfer scientist Lukas works at home while his wife Lina goes to bed. In a conference at the lab the next day, Lukas and his team are introduced to Doctor Jonas Bridges, who has been assigned to their project as a psychologist. Lukas is a participant in a blind experiment where he will interface with the mind of a comatose patient. He knows nothing about the subject and the subject knows nothing about him. Jonas will observe Lukas’ health throughout the experiment. Lukas’ wife shaves his head in preparation for the procedure.

In the lab, Lukas is fitted with transmitters and placed in a sensory deprivation chamber. Jonas advises Lukas to only observe and to not make contact with anything inside the patient’s mind. The initial experience for Lukas consists only of constant visual and sonic noise that becomes unbearable.

On the second attempt, Lukas manifests inside water. He discovers a drowning woman and gives her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation that turns into kissing. Lukas does not tell the other researchers that he made contact with the woman, although he does mention it to his wife.

Lukas next makes contact with the woman, later learned to be named Aurora, inside an empty house where they make love. On the lab monitors, the scientists notice that new synaptic connections are being created in the test subject while the contact is occurring, which is unexpected. Lukas does not reveal the encounter during his session with Jonas after the trial. Jonas appears to sense that there is something Lukas is not telling him.

Lukas confides in another doctor named Darius about his experiences during the trials. Darius advises him that the other researchers should know what is really going on, but Lukas fears it would end the experiment. Later, Lukas tries to forcibly have sex with his wife.

Lukas and Aurora have their next rendezvous on a beach where they watch a strange insect lay eggs that it then eats. The two are playful with each other before sharing an exotic feast together, where their playfulness and intimacy continues until Aurora has a breakdown.

Back in reality, Lukas traces Aurora to the intensive care unit upstairs in the facility and sees her with her head shaved in a comatose state. He then takes her patient file to Darius and they discuss possible reasons for her coma. Lukas asks Darius to get him thiopental to help Aurora recall suppressed memories. Lukas acquires the drug and injects it into Aurora.

The scientists notice increased brain activity in the subject during the next session. Lukas and Aurora are at a party where Aurora expresses being upset with him. As a gift, she gives Lukas a picture of her with another man. Lukas realizes that she sees him as this other person before they participate in an orgy. After the session, Jonas tells the lead researcher that the experiments should be suspended because he suspects Lukas is hiding something.

Using a sketch he made of the man in Aurora’s mind, Lukas asks her nurses if they recognize the man in the drawing. He learns that Aurora was in a car crash with a man who did not survive. Lina believes that her husband is having an affair.

Lukas relives the night of the car crash with Aurora. Her eye opens in the real world during a split second of consciousness. Jonas insists on keeping Lukas under observation following this transfer. Jonas asks to speak with Lina, but Lukas makes an excuse. Lina is gone when Lukas returns home. Lukas becomes violent with a hooker, but she runs away.

In the next session, Lukas finds Aurora with the other man. Lukas violently kills the man with his bare hands, which frightens Aurora. Lukas bleeds from his nose in the deprivation tank. Aurora enters cardiac arrest. Lukas has to be restrained from attending to her.

After Aurora is stabilized, Lukas asks for one more connection to help her. He admits the truth about his sessions with Aurora, which angers Mantas, the project lead. Jonas convinces Mantas to allow one more session.

Lukas chases Aurora on a beach while they are both naked. Lukas flatlines. He then visualizes Aurora telling him her story and he regains consciousness. Aurora has died.

Review:

“Dreamscape.” “Inception.” “The Cell.” “Extracted.” Science-fiction and horror have taught audiences many cautionary lessons. And one of those is that at best, entering another person’s mind is certain to come with extreme complications. At worst, permanent psychological and physical scarring, if not a traumatic death, is assured for at least one of the participants. Despite these cinematic warnings, movie scientists continue repeating the same mistakes with their ill-advised journeys into intangible realms of the human brain.

Lukas is one such man on a team of well-meaning research scientists trying to break into the minds of comatose patients. Lukas is paired with an unconscious woman, Aurora, and tasked with connecting to her brain, albeit with an explicit instruction to not make contact with anything he might encounter while inside. There would not be much of a story if he remained an impartial observer, however. So Lukas ignores the prime directive at his first opportunity and enters into a cerebral fantasy with Aurora that develops quickly from affection into obsession, and soon spills over into the real world.

Try not to be too distracted by the hairy moles that everyone seems to have in this film.

“Vanishing Waves” is a dark fairy tale of stylish eroticism that is very much a romance film using the trappings of science-fiction to develop its story. There is deep substance to the atmosphere, but the emphasis from director Kristina Buozyte is on conveying her themes through mood. “Vanishing Waves” brims with dreamlike imagery from the clean production design without resorting to visual trickery. Simple elements like colors and sets are never overwhelming and the otherworldly mindscape never contains more visual information than necessary to illustrate the setting. Buozyte is indulging in cinema as an expressive art form, but not at the expense of distracting from the connection between the two central characters. Their pseudo love story is always the driving force behind the narrative.

While the scenery and the cinematography certainly do their part to create the hypnotic etherealness, it is the exceptional audio design that makes the film complete. The soundtrack effectively complements the sensory experience with trance-like hums and throbbing pulses. The auditory rhythm at times becomes unnoticeable, but it always remains a featured player. “Vanishing Waves” credits three different Supervising Sound Editors (Mathieu Rathelot, Leo Pouget, and Karen Blum), and their combined contributions to the overall feel cannot be overstated.

Storytelling inside the connected minds is accomplished with little to no dialogue, although some of the individual scenes end up playing better than the film as a whole. Specifically, there is a mesmerizing quality to a peculiar Oceanside dinner scene that draws in the viewer through the eyes and the ears, rather than an emotional tether to the characters. A tasteful orgy sequence is reservedly sexy without being salaciously titillating.

“Vanishing Waves” does tread into tedium in multiple instances, however. The ending, particularly a scene involving the two leads running naked across a beach, goes on well past the point of sustaining even the most devoted attention. The movie too often asks for a generous serving of patience while it basks in its own artfulness. At times, it makes the experience more oppressive than embracing. Making it through these moments that are much longer than they need to be is a titanic chore for viewers who are not invested in the relationship between Lukas and Aurora. Yet overall, it is difficult to not appreciate the intelligent design bursting from the film’s sights and sounds, even during those times when the story drags to the point of annoyance.